Home
Focus Areas
About Us
Successful Providence Childhood Language Program Expands to 5 Other Cities
Foundation: Bloomberg Philanthropies
Providence Talks is expanding into five additional U.S. cities. Bloomberg Philanthropies recently announced that Birmingham, Alabama, Detroit, Hartford, Louisville and Virginia Beach are picking up the program.
Providence Talks is an early-childhood program aimed at closing the word gap between affluent and low-income children.
The program provides families with a recording device called a word pedometer that counts the adult words spoken in a child's presence, as well as the number of conversations a child engages in during the day.
Providence launched Providence Talks in 2014 after winning a competitive, $5 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. It enrolls children between 2 and 30 months of age and coaches parents on the importance of speaking to their child.
The expansion is in line with a 2018 Brown University study that found the program "constitutes a promising strategy to disrupt the status quo to advance learning for all children" but that some parts of it are more effective than others.
According to Kimberly Fernandez, executive direct of Federal Hill House, a Providence non-profit that oversees Providence Talks, they are tweaking the program to offer more "play groups" for a longer period of time, 10 weeks as opposed to six.
The Brown review also found that by the end of the program, on average, all children made progress. Read the Entire Article
Selected Grant News Headlines
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
Students in Newport News, Va., collected 4,000 cans at the annual Youth Volunteer Corps of Hampton Roads Canstructure Competition to create a three-dimensional work of art, the Virginian-Pilot...more
"We don't learn much about the history of some of the greatest Arab thinkers that really changed the pathway of the world we see today," says Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabi's...more
If you've ever wanted to shoot a movie in the palm of your hand, you'll soon be able to do so in Fort Worth, Texas. A company called Trilogy Studios is building three virtual production stages in...more
It's that time of year again: time for parents to start thinking about summer camps for their kids. If you're looking for a place where your kids will have fun while learning about the world...more
A Pennsylvania school district is winning rave reviews for its Destination Imagination competition, which encourages students to think outside the box. The Centre Daily Times reports three...more
If something catastrophic happened in Australia, paramedics, doctors, and other emergency responders would likely be right in the thick of it. That's the premise of The Future of a Mass Casualty...more
If you're looking for a way to get your kids invested in their faith this summer, the Sunday School Store may have just the curriculum for you. The store has just released Season's of Faith, a...more
John Lithgow is a two-time Academy Award nominee, multiple Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globes winner, and has appeared in everything from The Old Man to Killers of the Flower Moon. But the 78-year-old...more
"It's time to be innovative," Pennsylvania state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski said Friday during a panel discussion on the state's teacher shortage. "We all have a duty and responsibility to find...more
Oregon's two senators have announced $47.7 million in federal funding will be going to rural schools and other projects in the state, the Oregonian reports. The money is coming from the Secure...more
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Social Entrepreneurship: Meet the Disruptors of The World Of Philanthropy
William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan of Dowser write about the social entrepreneurs slowly and steadily dirsupting the world of philanthropy. According to Forbes, philanthropy disruptors are those that believe “no one company is so vital that it can’t be replaced and no single business model too perfect to upend.”
